


Martyr

by double_negative



Category: Johnny the Homicidal Maniac
Genre: (poorly), Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, Anger Management, Asexual Character, Blood and Injury, Bloodplay, Consensual But Not Safe Or Sane, Knifeplay, M/M, Masochism, Poor Life Choices, Saviour Complex, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-30
Updated: 2018-01-30
Packaged: 2019-03-11 10:36:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13522452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/double_negative/pseuds/double_negative
Summary: If that means he never tries to hurt anyone else, Edgar is more than willing.A kink meme fill that I will post here, because I can't follow rules to save my life."Edgar as a straight up masochist. Preferably with Johnny doing the hurting, lol".





	Martyr

**Author's Note:**

> I have questioned writing for JtHM for a really long time, since it's my main fandom and yet, I just couldn't find it in myself to actually start. I am so glad the OP broke my creative block. I'm not really good, but heh. First time, here we go.  
> There's no smut, because I can't do this to Johnny. Maybe one day? But no, probably never.
> 
> Also AU details: no wastelocks, no moose, Nny is just really, really mentally unstable. Whether he actually kills people without all of that is left to your personal vision of his character.

Johnny's violent. That much should be obvious from a single cursory look. He's all jagged edges and poorly contained malice and blades stuffed into every possible place that will hold them. Dealing with him is like trying to navigate a minefield without having a single clue to where the mines are, each step accompanied by dread, but also incredible relief, when it doesn't turn you into bloody mush, painting your surroundings. Johnny is the person to laugh gleefully if he actually saw you blow up and compare your scattered entrails to the cherry slushy in his convenience store paper cup.

Maybe it's the reason Edgar can't stay away. He never found it in himself to be particularly suicidal, but that is never the point really. If Johnny doesn't try to hurt anyone else, then Edgar is more than willing to risk his own wellbeing. He finds it quite amusing, ironic, actually, that with his upbringing he ultimately makes himself out to be a martyr. God damn his saviour complex.

Edgar tries to be around just in case and he's thankful that for the most part Johnny doesn't really mind him being there. Spending time with Johnny might not actually be all that bad and it's not like Edgar has anyone to come back to in his own life. It's not like anyone misses him or would miss him, so he abandons his old life and builds a new one around Johnny and his murderous intents. In his mind, it's a reasonable tradeoff, maybe even a good one - from meaningless lonely existing to some semblance of a relationship and also a chance to do something good for the world by not letting Johnny enact his rage as freely as he wants.

Edgar becomes good at diverting attention, holding off Johnny's outbursts until they are alone. It's actually easier than he imagined, with Johnny's mind being as scattered as it is. At first, Edgar thinks that with enough distractions the anger would fizzle out, forgotten, but it never does. It builds up inside Johnny, seeping into his every move, until there's nothing that will keep him away from enacting violence. It's like a blood-soaked bandage that needs changing once in a while so it doesn't bleed completely through. So Edgar comes up with a new plan.

There are plenty of distractions. Cherry-flavoured snacks, a tv program they would be late for if they don't go now, a weird bug or a cute dog, some really impressive graffiti or maybe even falling flat on his face so Johnny would laugh and forget about whatever was making him angry.

There are plenty of distractions, but when they're safely away from others, it doesn't take much to provoke Johnny's rage. Edgar would take it all so others won't. So what if Edgar likes it a little bit more than any person should? When you devote your life to something, even if it's being someone else's victim, it's always better to enjoy the things you're doing. Besides, it's not really masochism if you're doing it for the greater good, right?

It is.

He tries to deny it, to hide the excitement stirring in his blood when Johnny pulls a knife on him.

He can't.

It's for the best, he says to himself. Greater good, venerable intentions. It's turning the other cheek, noble and dignified.

There's nothing dignified in how his whole body trembles in anticipation.

When Johnny is angry with you, at you, he seems almost inhuman. His frail body is a tightly-wound coiled spring, his smile unfolds sharp and cruel like a switchblade he carries tucked into his boot. He looks unhinged, volatile and at the same time otherworldly. There's something graceful, fluid, efficient about his movements, it's like a practiced dance, so unlike his usual jittery twitchy gestures. It's like only at that point, a brief moment when he cuts into someone, he truly becomes who he was supposed to be all along. It's mesmerizing to watch Johnny let go, slip into this indulgent trance. It's a performance, full of theatrical gestures and pain.

With a blade to his skin, Edgar struggles to not press into it. Good things come to those who wait, he reminds himself and doesn't even bother to question his warped definition of "good" anymore. No matter if he wants it to be over quicker, or if he just wants it in general, he's not the one in control here. It's not his show.

Johnny doesn't really know the limits. He doesn't really care, but there's something exhilarating in it, in trusting your life to someone. In hoping they like you as much as you like them or, at least, enough to not permanently injure you. It's an act of relinquishing control for both of them, but in it, they learn other kinds of discipline. Johnny lets himself slip into his natural, original state, but learns to restrict the amount of harm he wants to inflict. Edgar stops being the sensible and responsible one and gains... whatever he gets out of it. He's not sure anymore.

There's searing pain in his shoulder and the anticipation turns to gratitude and then, quickly, desperation. The knife cuts into his flesh easily, it's freshly sharpened and clean this time, which is as much consideration as Edgar gets. The blood wells to the surface, spills over the edge of a cut and runs down in thick rivulets, painting his torso in streaks of red, pooling in the dip of his belly button. It takes Edgar a second to catch his breath, because it's too sudden, too much, but it always was like this. He's just thankful Johnny is captivated by the blood dropping down from the knife's edge and it gives him a moment to relax again.

"You know, blood makes for an interesting painting medium," Johnny muses, studying the metallic glint of a hunting knife in the dim light of his basement, "I used to paint once".

Edgar knows, but he makes a show of pretending he doesn't. It's not like he can admit to snooping around Johnny's house when he finally falls asleep at random hours of the day. He saw them, the paintings. Not much is left of those, most canvases torn and slashed to pieces, but in cuts and rips some things are still recognizable. Expressions of torture and sadness, bulging eyes and swirling tentacles, parts of something that can either be an eldritch monstrosity or a pile of rotting animal carcasses. And maybe at this point, Edgar should have ran and never came back, but that was the exact point in time he decided he should stay, he should help. The pictures, the visions birthed by Johnny's talent, even in pieces, were captivating. Snapshots of a mind so broken and unsound that anyone in their right mind would be afraid. Well, fuck fear.

"Why don't you try it again?", Edgar asks, knowing he's toying with something he shouldn't touch, but then again, their entire relationship is that.

"And why would I do that?" the expression on Johnny's face is distrustful, confused, like Edgar just suggested that he walks off a skyscraper.

"Maybe it would be a good outlet for your, you know...", and Edgar trails off. Sure, it would be nice if Johnny put his hostility and hatred on canvas, but that would also mean he won't hurt him again. That would be good for the world, but not really ideal in terms of what Edgar himself wants.

"I don't." Nny's words come out in a hiss, as he looms over Edgar, and Edgar knows, he's done it. He finally pissed him off enough. "But if you like art that much, I can think of something we can do with that."

Before Edgar opens his mouth to try to protest, to explain himself (not that Johnny would really listen), his voice comes out in a strangled whine as another cut is placed just below the first one, along the length of his collarbone. This one is deeper, gushing blood in weak sputters. It's not at all what Edgar expected and when he realises, he's still alive, there's relief mixed in with pain and still struggling to breathe from the pain, Edgar laughs. It sounds more like a cough or a sob, but Johnny catches it, Johnny understands, his eyes darting over Edgar in disbelief.

"I suspected that you liked it, Vargas, but that's kind of fucked up," he muses, mock disgust on his face. "Maybe more fucked up than I am and that's like, a whole lot of fucked up!"

There's something almost like amusement, twisting his features and Edgar has never seen that much genuine excitement on Johnny's face. It's terrifying. It's beautiful.

"I'm gonna make you into art!"

 

Nny's fingers are as cold as the metal of his blades. His nails catch at Edgar's skin, adding pale pink lines to the deep red of cuts left by his hunting knife and light brown-ish raised scars left from previous times.

Johnny grumbles about regretting not having a paintbrush, while he dips his fingertips in still damp blood, trickling from Edgar's wounds and Edgar tries not to hyperventilate at that remark. He doesn't really know if it would be better or worse, because while the paintbrushes might tickle awfully, having Nny's hands on his body is unbearable too. With no fabric separating them, no gloves on Nny's hands and Edgar's shirt discarded on the floor, but already stained, it almost seems intimate. As intimate as it can get with someone like Johnny.

He trails his blood-covered fingertips over Edgar's torso in strange swirling patterns and Edgar recognizes some things he's seen in Johnny's drawings. Spirals of something organic, something that might be alive, and it looks alive with Edgar's heaving breaths moving his ribcage.

"Don't get too excited, you'll ruin it!" Johnny looks like he's concentrating really hard on the picture, tip of his tongue stuck out between his teeth.

Edgar is not sure if by "excited" Johnny meant what he thinks he meant, because Nny is strangely ignorant of a suggestiveness of a situation they landed in. For Edgar, it's actually torturous. The touch of fingers dragged in lines or pressed down to make dots is hypnotizing, maddening, because it's too much, too much of Johnny and not enough, not nearly enough for Edgar. Each new cut laid across his body is a promise of danger, of excitement, of possibility, sending tingles of pleasure through Edgar, but they aren't strong enough to bring him off. He knows, Johnny didn't even consider the possibility of arousal factoring in their little sessions. It's not what it is about, not what it was supposed to be, Edgar reminds himself over and over, and still, his body betrays him, and with how closely Johnny is watching him, he should have noticed already, he should have murdered him already for even daring to sully this... "thing" they have, had figured out for such a long time. He should have kicked him out, which, arguably would have been even worse. But Johnny just studies him carefully, adding a line here and there, painting Edgar in his own blood and injury.

There's no anger with which Johnny usually cuts into Edgar, no intent to make it hurt as much as possible. Not that it doesn't hurt, when Nny presses his fingers into the biggest of his cuts which started to dry out, digs his fingernails in to draw out more blood. It hurts, but it hurts differently. It's not that much adrenaline and endorphins rushing in to mask the pain, not the usual deal Edgar came to expect and love. It's more deliberate, careful, measured, controlled. Not abandoning your life on the hands of someone who can take it without any reservations, more like giving your life to someone who knows what they want to do with it. It feels like Johnny needs him. Actually needs him. That all the anger and disgust and hatred really disappear when he channels them into Edgar.

"It suits you," Nny is smiling, almost sheepishly, surveying his work. His hands and arms are splattered in Edgar's blood, there are some dark red spots on his face and when Johnny licks his lips, he makes a face, realizing, it got even there. Edgar feels like he's going to pass out. It's too much. The bloodloss and the arousal and the thought of himself on Johnny's tongue.

They both take their time to survey the results of Nny's work. It's certainly some kind of a creature, some strange chimera. Edgar recognizes antlers, drawn roughly with elongated cuts along his collarbones, stretching over his shoulders and towards his arms, turning into tentacles, circling around his biceps and coiling all the way down to his wrists. It's harder to see what's drawn on his stomach, streaks of red from the cuts still bleeding, disrupting and distorting the lines. It looks like a gaping maw, with teeth growing seemingly at random and several curled tongues, some thick and triangle, almost human, some bifurcated, reptilian. It drips with blood. It's beautiful. Beautiful like everything Johnny does.

"You should get a canvas next time. It would be a shame to wash this off," Edgar smiles in return.

"Can I still use your blood though?" the question sounds almost innocent for what it's asking for.

Edgar just nods. It's not what he expected, but it feels right.

"And it won't be all lost. These will surely scar," Johnny laughs, pointing towards the cuts making up the antlers, he actually laughs, with no malice, just pure delight. His expression turns guarded almost immediately, when his gaze trails to an obvious issue in Edgar's pants. "I'm not helping with that."

And Edgar knows he was too stupid to expect anything. So he just grabs his stained shirt of the floor and marches towards the bathroom.

Good things come to those who wait, he's sure. And he's already lucky enough as he is.

When he stumbles up the stairs, getting blood all over the handrails, he hears Johnny calling after him.

"You know, maybe we're equally fucked up."

And then.

"We should get you some iron supplements."

Edgar is unable to keep the content smirk off his face the whole time he cleans and bandages himself up. And if he takes a lot of a longer time in the shower than he needs... well, so be it.


End file.
